The New York Times is reporting the government has been secretly monitoring thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans. Bush administration officials also warned the government will detain Iraqis or Iraqi sympathizers in the event of a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Senior Iraqi officials told chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday Iraq will give "full co-operation and full transparency" to inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction. Iraq also intends to meet the UN’s December 8th deadline and make a full declaration of all material it holds relating to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

With Iraqi President Saddam Hussein insisting that Iraq no longer has weapons of mass destruction we are going to spend the rest of the hour looking at how the United States helped illegally arm Iraq in the 1980s.

The United Nations Security Council is set to vote today on a new resolution on Iraq. After months of opposition France has said it will vote for the resolution. How Russia will vote is less certain, but U.S. officials do not expect Moscow to use its veto power.

If and when the US decides to carry out a massiveattack on Iraq, the southern port city of Basra willbe one of the major frontlines. In many ways italready is. Basra lies within the so-called no flyzones imposed by the US and Britain and the peoplelive under regular US bombing. George W Bush touts theShi’ites of the south as potential U.S. allies in afuture U.S. attack, but it is this area of the countrythat has suffered the most from US...

On Sunday Saudi Arabia said it would not allow the U.S. to use its facilities for any attack on neighboring Iraq, even if a strike was sanctioned by the United Nations. Meanwhile, in Baghdad a senior Iraqi diplomat has told Democracy Now! that he believes if the United Nations Security Council voted today on Washington’s Iraq Resolution, at least two nations, France and Russia, would veto it. The comments come in the latest installment...